Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American engineer who devised the scientific organization of work, born in the city of Germantown (Pennsylvania) in 1856 and died in Philadelphia in 1915. Coming from a wealthy family, he dropped out of law school due to an eye problem and from 1875 he dedicated himself to work as a worker in one of the Philadelphia iron and steel industrial companies.
His training and personal skills allowed Taylor to move immediately to direct a machine shop, where he closely observed the work of the workers who were responsible for cutting metals. And it was from that practical observation that Frederick Taylor drew the idea of analyzing work, breaking it down into simple tasks, strictly timing them, and requiring workers to complete the necessary tasks in a timely manner.
This analysis of the work allowed, in addition, to organize the tasks in such a way that the downtime due to worker movements or changes in activity or tools was reduced to a minimum; and establish a piece rate salary (per piece produced) based on the estimated production time, a salary that should act as an incentive for the intensification of the work rate. The tradition was thus replaced by planning in the workshops, passing control of the work from the hands of the workers to the managers of the company and ending the struggle between workers and employers regarding productivity standards.
Taylor became an engineer by attending evening courses, and after personally struggling to impose the new method in his workshop, he went on to work as chief engineer at a large Pennsylvania steel company (the Bethlehem Steel Company) from 1898 to 1901. Taylor surrounded himself with a team with which he developed his methods, completed his organizational innovations with purely technical discoveries (such as fast cutting steels, in 1900) and published several books defending the "scientific organization of work" (the main one was Principles and methods of scientific management, 1911).
The scientific organization of work or Taylorism expanded throughout the United States since the end of the 19th century, sponsored by industrial entrepreneurs, who saw in it the possibility of increasing their control over the work process, while increasing productivity and could employ unskilled workers (non-union immigrants) in increasingly simplified, mechanical and repetitive manual tasks.
Background, the awakening of the administration and the technological environment of the time
Although work has always existed in the history of humanity, the history of organizations and their administration is a chapter that began in recent times, it can be said that administration is as old as man.
People have for many centuries forming and reforming organizations. In reviewing the history of humanity, the footprint of the peoples who worked together in formal organizations appears, for example, the Greeks and Romans, the Roman Catholic Church, the company of the East Indies. People have also written about how to make organizations efficient and efficient and effective, long before terms such as administration were in common use until today.
We can also mention great authors like:
Socrates
It has a great influence to establish the administrative aspects in organizations, it is also considered as one of the initiators in the studies of ethics since it theoretically established the moral aspects about good and virtue.
Plato
Philosopher who establishes in his book the republic the theory of specialization or division of labor, thus allowing to have a great contribution to economic science.
Aristotle
In Aristotle's legacy it is established that the experience of individuals is the source of knowledge and his theory of ethics has to do with happiness and that the purpose of man is to achieve it.
It establishes that to carry out any activity that has an end, whoever does it considers that they also do it for something, that is, they seek a good for it.
F. Taylor's Contributions
Taylor develops five principles of administration which give management powers and responsibilities, they are:
- Planning Principle: replace the improvised work of the worker, with procedures-based methods. Preparation Principle: selection of the workers according to their aptitudes and abilities to produce more and better. Control Principle: control the work to verify that the It is being executed correctly. Execution Principle: distribute the attributions and responsibilities so that the execution of the work is disciplined. Study and Analyze the work carried out by the worker, that is, how he does it.
F. Taylor review
Taylor's scientific management model received a number of criticisms throughout history.
Among the main criticisms made in that period, some can be named:
Mechanism of scientific administration
The scientific administration paid attention to the human element, concerned with tasks, organization and execution, and with factors directly related to the position and function of the operator, which would be time and movement. This theory is known as “theory of the machine ”.
Super operator specialization
In the search for efficiency, the scientific administration advocated the specialization of the operator through the division of all operations into their constituent elements. These forms of task organization not only deprive workers of job satisfaction, but worse, they violate human dignity.
Taylor's proposition that administrative efficiency increases with job specialization.
Microscopic view of man Scientific management refers to man as an employee taken individually, ignoring that the worker is a human and social being _ hardly valuing muscular fatigue and ignoring a type of fatigue more subtle than nervous. Fatigue was considered exclusively a muscular and physiological phenomenon, studied mainly through statistical data.
Taylor considered human and material resources not so much reciprocally adjustable, but above all, man working as an appendix to industrial machinery. Regarding this aspect, he was severely criticized and branded as having made a mistake as a pioneer.
Lack of physical proof Scientific administration is also criticized for trying to develop a science without presenting scientific proof of its propositions and principles. The method used by Taylor is an empirical and concrete method where knowledge is reached by evidence and not by abstraction: it is based on isolated data observable by the analyst of times and movements.
Incomplete approach to organization. For many authors, scientific administration is incomplete, partial and unfinished, as it is limited to the formal aspects of the organization, completely omitting the informal organization and mainly, the human aspects of the organization. Also interactions between many critical variables, such as the personal commitment and professional orientation of the members of the organization, the conflict between individual objectives and organizational objectives, etc.
Limitation of the field of application. Its principles and methods lack a broader complement, since Taylor faces the problem of the rational organization of work, starting from a limited and specific point in the company, which fatally limits and restricts its approach, since it does not consider in greater detail the other aspects of the life of a company, such as financial and commercial, among others.
Prescriptive and regulatory approach. Scientific administration is characterized by the concern to establish and prescribe normative principles that must be applied as a recipe in certain circumstances, so that the administrator can be successful. It seeks to standardize certain situations in order to pattern how they should be managed. It is an approach directed to prescriptions, to canned solutions and to normative principles that should govern how to do things within organizations. That perspective shows the organization how it should function, rather than explaining how it works.
Closed system approach
View companies as if they existed in a vacuum, or as if they were autonomous, absolute and hermetically closed entities to any influence coming from outside them; It is characterized by the fact of visualizing only what happens within an organization, without taking into account the environment in which it is located.
It is a closed system approach and its behavior is mechanical, predictable and deterministic: its parts work within an unchangeable logic. However, organizations never behave like closed systems and cannot be reduced to just a few variables or some more important aspects.
Taylor's Top Followers (Husbands Frank BuckerGilberth and Lilian MollerGilbreth) Frank B. Gilbrteh
Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1868-1924) was born in Fairfield, USA. When he was 17 years old, and having passed the exams to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ten years later he was the chief superintendent of a construction company and at 26, he became one of the most renowned contractors in the world.
He married Lilian Evelyn Moller, an English literature student who later became a doctor, with whom she had twelve children.
Together with his wife, Frank studied the movements of bricklayers in construction, both at the moment and in films and photographs. They created ways to make their job easier and did ergonomics studies.
He left Contratism under construction in 1912 to study scientific administration and collaborated with Taylor in work organization studies and in his research on task execution time and fatigue.
After Frank's death in 1924, Lilian continued her work and disclosed a series of organizational concepts aimed at valuing the human factor. She also tried to remain at the helm of Frank's consulting firm, but the clients decided not to renew their contracts with a woman in charge. Lilian was the first industrial psychologist in history.
He established an Institute for the study of movements, where he taught the different methodologies they had created. Later, she started home appliances and home efficiency studies on her own and was hired by General Electric. She entered the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, earned an honorary degree in engineering, and a doctorate.
His studies and experiments led Frank to identify 17 basic elements that could be applied in any activity to reduce the amount of movement necessary. He called these elements Therbligs and assigned a symbol and a color.
conclusion
We can say that when we talk about organization we are talking about Frederick Winslow Taylor, the main contributor to the scientific organization of work.
His training and personal ability allowed him to observe the practice from which he extracted the idea of observing the job, doing it in simple tasks, so that the workers did the necessary task and on time.
The analysis of the work also allowed the organization of tasks in such a way that the times we called dead were reduced.
We can also mention that he became an engineer attending night courses and after struggling to put a new method, he became a worker to boss.
His scientific organization, which we can call Taylorism, spread throughout the United States, increasing his work productivity.
The administration could say that from the medieval ages, where hunting in groups was applied, we could say that the organization or teamwork was acquired.
Taylor developed 5 principles of management in which they gave management powers and responsibilities.
Principles of approach, principle of preparation, principle of control, principle of execution and study and analyze the work done.
We can mention that Taylor's scientific management model received a series of criticisms.
His top collaborators and supporters, Lillian M. Gilbreth and Frank B. Gilbreth, provided valuable assistance to his accomplishments.
Bibliography
- http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/t/taylor_frederick.htm
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In the following video, from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Taylor's main contributions to the theory of business administration are synthesized.
